Americans eat 100 acres of pizza every day, and that pizza
acreage often comes in boxes--boxes business owners can blanket
with advertisements to reach the pizza-eating public.

According to Joyce Shulman of Jump Media Ltd.,
a Water Mill, New York, company that sells this kind of
nontraditional advertising, businesses can use either large pizza
boxes to target families in the suburbs or smaller, personal-sized
boxes to reach the urban 9-to-5ers.

If pizza boxes won't work for your ad campaign, consider
other nontraditional venues--such as ice bags or coffee cups.
Though heavies like Samuel Adams beer have used Jump Media's
ice bag ads, Shulman notes a growing business with a local
clientele can also benefit from the strategy. Prices range from
about $12,000 for a small campaign to about $200,000 for a larger,
national one.

Are you wondering which venue will suit your business? Ice bag
ads work best for food and beverage businesses, says Shulman, while
coffee cup ads are a natural fit for companies in financial
services, electronics, high-end consumer goods and other industries
that target professionals.

For the Record

Does your business make the tallest, biggest, smallest or
fastest widget in the world? If so, you might have a shot at having
your name immortalized as a Guinness World Record holder.

Patty Keagle, owner of a Paul
Revere's Pizza franchise in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, did just
that in 2001 when she and her ex-husband, Joe, created the largest
commercially available pizza, measuring 4 feet in diameter.

Although the feat took a year for the Keagles and employee Steve
Gholson to accomplish, the effort was more than worth it: Sales
increased by 20 percent after a local TV report and national
coverage on CNN and Fox News helped spread the word. "It put
us on the map," says Patty, 38, who's sold 65 of the
enormous pizzas to date, "and it was fun for us to
do."

If you're an aspiring record-breaker, make the Guinness Web
site (www.guinnessrecords.com) your
first stop. There you'll find rules, FAQs, previous records and
a form for declaring which record you want to break. Guinness
spokesperson Brian Reinert says people can also submit new records
and categories for consideration.

Don't despair if you don't have the biggest or grandest
product--Reinert notes that a service business can hold a record,
too, citing the fastest haircutter as an example. So start thinking
about how you can claim Guinness immortality. "Where
there's a will, there's a way," says Reinert. "If
you can dream it, most likely you can do it."